Losing Bella
by matrixdestiny
Summary: It's only been a few weeks since Charlie gave Bella away at her wedding, but so much has changed in Bella's life. What does Charlie think about these developments? How does he handle losing the Bella he knows and loves?
1. Visiting the Cullens

**Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. All thanks go to their creator Stephenie Meyers, and any other copyright holders.**

**Author Note: I was curious about what was going on in Charlie's head after Bella's change was revealed. This is my exploration of his thoughts. All dialog comes from Breaking Dawn, Chapter 25, starting at page 504.**

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The cruiser slowed as I approached the Cullen's drive. I shuddered as I remembered Jake changing in front of me this afternoon, a nightmare bigger than my cruiser bursting out of his skin. And to think I'd been happy that Bella had been spending all her time with this creature while Edward was away. I was happy that Jake had broken through her stupor, meanwhile she had hung out with a werewolf, rode a motorcycle, and then jumped off of a cliff. My heart sunk as I thought about how thoroughly ignorant I had been. Then it froze solid as I thought about how ignorant I still was.

After Jake shrunk back into his own skin and put on a pair of shorts, he told me my new son-in-law was also something...else. I couldn't be totally surprised, something always cringed inside me at Edward -- at all the Cullens, really -- but I had repressed my issues with Edward at first as a father's irrational reaction, then as my own grudge for him leaving. I had even defended Carlisle and the others against the small town fears when they first moved into town. Now I learn that apparently those "small town fears" had a good basis. Great. And my daughter, my only child, had been involved in this.

I was terrified.

Suddenly, the Cullen's house broke through the trees. Absorbed in my thoughts and fears, I'd barely noticed the long drive snaking through the forest from the road. I rolled to a stop near the steps to the front door, and took a deep breath.

Jake had said this afternoon that Bella had changed, changed to be more like the Cullens, but this change had saved her life. _More like the Cullens_. As in, _not human. _But, if it had saved her, then I could endure this change, even appear happy, if it made Bella happy. Anything for Bella.

I cut the engine and got out. I made my way up the wooden steps to the front door, steeling myself for whatever was ahead.

I had barely knocked on the door when it was opened by Carlisle.

"Hello, Charlie," Carlisle said with a smoothly apologetic face.

"Carlisle," I said, trying to reign in my emotions. "Where's Bella?"

"Right here, Dad," a perfect, musical voice said. My first, knee jerk reaction was to look for Alice, but then I saw Bella on the couch.

I tried to control my reaction, but I'm sure my face was a billboard as I looked at the flawless statue that had just called me Dad. I was lost for a moment, seeing nothing of my Bella in this pale creature, before I realized her hair was almost the same. A little shiny, like she'd just been to a salon, but still her color, still her hair. I looked at her eyes, searching for my Bella inside. My heart sank. The color was wrong. Dull brown, flat and dead, instead of the warm, deep chocolate that spoke volumes.

"Is that you, Bella?" I tried to say, but it came out a whisper.

"Yep," she said and then winced just slightly. "Hi, Dad."

The floor dropped out below my feet for a moment, until I actually _looked_ at the dull, dead brown eyes -- and noticed the contact lenses.

Her skin was the same smooth perfection as the Cullens', her poise and stillness echoed theirs, but her eyes were different. Because of contacts. She must have remembered me mentioning eyes -- reading a suspect's eyes, eyes as a lie detector, something -- and so she put in contacts to make me more comfortable. Even if the color still wasn't quite right, it was better than seeing the strange molten gold that seemed standard for the Cullens.

It still hurt to see the alien that my Bella had become, but the thoughtfulness of wearing contact lenses for my comfort was very much something the old Bella would do for her old man. With a deep breath, I realized the contacts made this all just the smallest bit possible.

"Hey, Charlie," Jake suddenly said from the corner. "How're things?"

I glanced over at Jake and shuddered at the thought of what was hiding under his skin before turning back to what was once my Bella. I slowly approached her, partly to confirm that she was wearing contacts, partly to see what she was holding.

I noticed Edward standing behind Bella, but I barely spared him a glance before looking back down at Bella.

She was so different, so _them_, that I had to ask again, "Bella?"

"It's really me," she said. It was rougher than before, less musical, but it still wasn't her. My jaw twitched, but at least I kept from wincing.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said, a little rougher and lower yet. Was she trying to make her voice more normal for me?

"Are you okay?" I asked. It wasn't enough, even now I was repressing emotions, but it was the easiest way to ask the big question.

"Really and truly great," she said. "Healthy as a horse."

"Jake told me that this was...necessary," I said. "That you were dying." She sure didn't look like she had just been dying.

Bella took a breath, and her eyes widened, a flicker crossing her face faster than I could follow.

"Jacob was telling you the truth," she said after a moment.

"That makes one of you," I said. It slipped out before I even thought to censor myself.

She ducked her head, glancing at the bundle in her arms. I remembered the other part of why I walked closer. I looked down, into a beautiful face.

"Oh," I said. I hadn't looked at a baby, I mean _really_ looked, since Bella's birth. Were they all this beautiful? "This is her. The orphan Jacob said you were adopting."

"My niece," Edward said smoothly. Of course she was beautiful, with Edward as an uncle.

"I thought you'd lost your family."

"I lost my parents. My older brother was adopted, like me. I never saw him after that. But the courts located me when he and his wife died in a car accident, leaving their only child without any other family." It was very smooth, like he had rehearsed it. Of course, so much he did was so very smooth.

The child glanced at me, and my breath caught again before she hid in Bella's hair.

"She's...she's, well, she's a beauty."

"Yes," Edward said.

"Kind of a big responsibility, though. You two are just getting started."

"What else could we do?" Edward asked as he touched the child's cheek and lips. "Would you have refused her?"

_So confident,_ I thought, _Wait until you get a little more life under your belt. _

"Hmph. Well," I said as I shook my head, "Jake says you call her Nessie?"

"No," Bella said sharply. "We don't. Her name is Renesmee."

_That's my girl_, I thought as I looked at her, _my stubborn Bella._

"How do you feel about this? Maybe Carlisle and Esme could --"

"She's mine," she said quickly. "I _want_ her."

I frowned as another thought hit me. "You gonna make me a grandpa so young?" I'd been so caught by Jake's demonstration, then by the thought of Bella being here instead of Atlanta, if she was still Bella, that I hadn't really thought out the mention he made of a child in the picture.

"Carlisle is a grandfather, too," Edward said with a smile.

That caught me short. I glanced at Carlisle, still by the front door. I knew he wasn't supposed to be that much younger than me, but he sure made me feel like an old man. If he was a grandpa now, too, I couldn't complain too much.

I snorted a bit, and an almost real laugh escaped me. "I guess that does sort of make me feel better." I glanced back down at Nessie. There was something so _magnetic_ about the child. "She sure is something to look at."

Renesmee must have known I was talking about her. Shaking off Bella's hair, she looked me full on.

I couldn't help but gasp.

_Those are Bella's eyes._ The deep, real chocolate that I had been searching for in Bella's face were staring out from this child.

_Breathe.  
_  
But, I gave Bella away in marriage barely a month ago.

_Breathe. _

Even if she was pregnant at the time, she wasn't showing then. There just wasn't enough _time_.

_Breathe._

This wasn't Edward's niece, _this was their daughter._

I dimly felt Jake's hand on my back. "Need to know, Charlie. It's okay. I promise," he whispered.

I swallowed. _The werewolf promises it's okay,_ I thought. _That doesn't really help._

_But he's still Billy's son._ _That counts for something_.

I nodded, then looked at Edward.

_If only looks really could kill._ But Bella probably wouldn't care for that thought.

"I don't want to know everything, but I'm done with the lies!"

"I'm sorry, but you need to know the public story more than you need to know the truth," Edward said calmly. So calm that it gave me pause, and I realized that my fists were clenched. "If you're going to be part of this secret, the public story is the one that counts. It's to protect Bella and Renesmee as well as the rest of us. Can you go along with the lies for them?"

I took a deep breath, then looked at Bella as she shifted a bit in her seat. "You might've given me some warning, kid."

I thought I saw a flicker of sorrow, maybe regret, as she replied, "Would it really have made this any easier?"

I frowned, and knelt closer to Bella. It was getting easier -- just a little bit -- to think of this creature as Bella. I could feel my Bella behind this mask.

Renesmee smiled and reached for me as a knelt. "Whoa," I said. _She's got a set of chompers on her, _I thought. Editting that, I said, "How old is she?"

"Um," Bella said, apparently waiting for Edward to fill in this part of the "public story" they were feeding me.

"Three months," Edward inserted smoothly. A moment later, he continued a little less certainly, "Rather, she's the size of a three month old, more or less. She's younger in some ways, more mature in others."

As if to prove that last point, Renesmee looked up at me and quite deliberately waved.

The room wavered a little bit, but I was saved by a hard elbow in my ribs. "Told you she was special, didn't I?" Jake said.

_Hasn't there been enough?_ I thought as I automatically cringed away.

"Oh, c'mon, Charlie," Jake whined. "I'm the same person I've always been. Just pretend this afternoon didn't happen."

I didn't need the reminder right now. "Just what is your part in all this, Jake? How much does Billy know? Why are you here?" 

_I thought you hated Edward_, I thought, but I managed to keep that to myself.

"Well, I could tell you all about it -- Billy knows absolutely everything -- but it involves a lot of stuff about werewo --"

"Ugnh!" It was childish, but I couldn't help covering my ears to keep that word out. "Never mind."

I saw Jake grin, and uncovered my ears a bit.

"Everything's going to be great, Charlie. Just try to not believe anything you see."

"Easy for you to say," I said. Or tried to say. I couldn't tell how much made it out of my muddled brain.

"Woo!" Emmett shouted, "Go Gators!"

I jumped at the boom of Emmett's voice. The thought of football was a lifeline, proof that outside these walls the normal world was waiting for me. "Florida winning?"

"Just scored the first touchdown," Emmett said. There was something else, but I was too busy struggling to hold on to the lifeline to a normal world to catch it. I stood up, trying to clear my head with deep breaths.

"Well," I said as I sat in the available recliner, "I guess we should see if they can hold on to the lead."


	2. Charlie's Theory

**Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. All thanks go to their creator Stephenie Meyer. This could all disappear at her whim, but so far she's been really kind about us playing in her sandbox.**

Author Note: I was curious about what was going on in Charlie's head after Bella's change was revealed. This is my exploration of his thoughts.

For more information on Charlie's theory about the Cullens, look on Wikipedia for Aos Si or Tuatha de Danann, or see **War for the Oaks**** by Emma Bull or ****Moorchild**** by Eloise McGraw, among many other wonderful sources.**

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I made it all the way down the drive, and a quarter mile down the main road, before I had to pull over and deal with what I'd just seen. They'd been careful, of course. From the start all the way through the football games, they kept up a good charade, just a little edge of weird hanging in the air. _Except for Bella_. She didn't have the "act normal" thing down, yet. Which, actually, made it a little better, since then I could see how she was struggling to act human for me, that she was obviously putting in a lot of effort to make me more comfortable.

And then there was Renesmee. There was a resemblance to Edward, of course, which would fit with the cover story of a niece he was adopting. But, there was no denying the resemblance to Bella, either, _which was physically impossible_. Nine months simply didn't fit into mere weeks!

I noticed my hands shaking on the steering wheel. Breathe, Charlie. There is an explanation.

Was there some sci-fi crap going on, faster than light and all that? I remember something like that...maybe from Star Trek? Great. Things are really bad if I'm looking to Star Trek for answers.

Except that something really is going on. Somehow nine months really got crammed into a matter of weeks. Plus at least another three months for her to grow. And, if the Cullens really were space aliens, they'd have some technology that would make them appear to be human without leaving that weirdness floating in the air. But what else would make time flow differently? _And make my baby girl a living statue_?

Stop. Breathe. I shouldn't even be thinking of this. Like they said, they can stick around as long as I don't ask questions. I just have to accept this, whatever it is, and be happy that she's safe and whole. And a mother.

Except that my mind doesn't work like that. Whether I became a cop because I kept worrying at a problem until I solved it, or whether I developed the habit by being a cop for so long, the end result was the same: I couldn't just let it sit. So, I kept working at the problem of just what on Earth was going on as I started the car moving again.

I'd been driving for a bit, trying to keep myself distracted by wondering what Sue was making for dinner and plotting to get Billy alone on a fishing boat so I could murder him quietly for keeping all this from me, when something clicked in the back of my brain. Time acting oddly, creatures of unearthly beauty, even babies just appearing, all did have something in common. Stories Auntie Beryl told me when I was a boy.

Auntie Beryl was always full of the most amazing stories during family gatherings, stories about dragons and knights, witches and warlocks. And stories about the fae. The fae came in all shapes and sizes, according to her, from little brownies that helped with the chores to nasty gremlins that caused painful mischief if not appeased, to the regal sidhe. Inhumanly beautiful and unchanging, Auntie Beryl told stories about how time meant little to them. Any human who supped with them would return to find months or years had passed, and babies could sometimes be born and mature in a day, or sometimes stay frozen as a toddler for years. She'd never told a story of a human becoming a fae, but there were enough stories of amazing feats performed by wild fae magic that I could believe it.

But could I believe it? It was insane, of course, worse than the Star Trek theory. Yet, somehow it just _felt_ right. Not to mention, after seeing Jake's crazy display, magic was much more believable than science fiction.


End file.
